I am a freelance photographer with interests in the press, social concerns, youth & multi-cultural subjects, and lifestyle ‘alternatives’.

My library includes 30+ years of editorial and commercial photography of events, social issues and environmental matters.

I have supplied pictures to illustrate articles in a variety of publications including – Guardian, Independent, i-D Magazine, Select, Sounds, DJ, Radio Times, New Statesmen & Society, and the Open University. I have contributed to a number of TV projects with the BBC and Channel4. Work is also distributed widely online, around the internet.

Moving beyond photography, have experimented with a variety of mixed media, developing visual awareness and a sense of graphic design that I have applied in a variety of projects. With the convergence of photographic and computer technologies, my interests have grown to include aspects of `electronic publishing’ multimedia presentation and the arts.

Work has been produced for publication, galleries, digital and slide projections at events and presented at large scale in public space.

I have MA and BA(hons) degrees in Photography from Nottingham Trent University.

Additionally, I hold an Associateship of the Royal Photographic Society [ARPS]and am a Member of the Academy of Interactive & Visual Arts AIVA

I am an active member of the National Union of Journalists NUJ and have a current press card.

An editorial and documentary photographer, a photo-journalist and ‘storyteller’ always on the lookout for another tale to tell.

Based in Nottingham UK.

——————————————————————————–

There are a lot of law changes going on, here in the UK, that affect people while trying to celebrate. Themselves, their culture. just wanting to have a nice time! and let rip with their friends. I am ‘middle aged’ now I suppose, but since I can remember, people around me have said. “Why won’t these bastards leave us alone? all we want to do is, festival, dance, party, etc. We’re not doing anyone any harm”. Thing is, the authorities have never agreed, and they think of ‘free spirits’ as a threat to the state and are treated accordingly.

I had much involvement with free festivals and the events and gatherings at Stonehenge. A free festival at the stones at the Summer solstice that had been happening for twelve years. Hundreds of thousands of young ( and not so young!) gathering for what was obviously a common need to celebrate together. The moral majority! general worthies, the police and the no fun brigade, banded together moved the law about a bit. Then came and hit us with sticks with much blood. It was kind of like a signal and intimidation, to stop many others coming to `play with us in the fields.

Because of our reputation in Britain as having a proper liberal democracy ??, it was news all over the place, that our police could behave in such a way towards unarmed civilians, in pursuit of political ends.

Talking to people in various countries, I know its not just Britain starting to get tough on deviants of various sorts. Although a lot of travelling people have left England because of the oppression of their lifestyles, some are starting to find similar law and prejudice applied to them, elsewhere as well.

Some of the ideas of festivals and travelling that we have done here, have some roots in America in the late sixties with the big festivals (with the free ones building on the edges!), merry pranksters etc. As well as with the ideas of gathering and celebration that go back 2 or 3 thousand years that seem as relevant now, as then.

The music is only part of the mix. Many developed a sense of common purpose and identity. There was an acceptance that modern life was too fast, expensive and polluting to the environment. We had discovered a kind of ‘Anarchy in Action’, and it worked! People began working out and managing relations within ‘our’ communities, without reference to ‘Them??’.

They re trying to squash deviance and dissent here, now. The words `new age traveller’ are dirty words here. Used by the press when they want to be rude to us. Now in `dance culture’, it all goes round again.

Blogroll

An ongoing diary of stuff, allsorts, and things wot happen ......
I am based in Nottingham UK

tash @ riseup.net

Tashs’ Festival, Travellin’ and Environmental
Photographic Archives.

I am a photographer with a special interest to document the lives of travelling
people and those attending Festivals, Stonehenge etc, what the press often describe
as ‘New Age Travellers’.

With my photography, I have tried to say something of the wide variety of people
engaged in ‘Alternatives’, and youths’ many sub-cultures and
to present a more positive view.

I have photographed many free and commercial events and have, in recent years,
extended my work to include dance parties (’rave culture’), gay-rights
events, environmental direct actions, and protest against the Criminal Justice
Act and more recently, issues surrounding the Global Capitalism.

Further, police surveillance has recently become a very important subject for
me!

In recognition of this work, received a ‘Winston’ from Privacy
International, at the 1998 ‘Big Brother’ Awards. The citation reads:
“Alan Lodge is a photographer who has spent more than a decade raising
awareness of front-line police surveillance activities, particularly the endemic
practice of photographing demonstrators and activists”.

I am currently involved with the setting up and administration of Nottinghamshire
Indymedia. An ‘open-publishing’ system which is part of an international
‘alternative media’ network.

“Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?'
Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?'
Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?'
But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?'
And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right.”
Martin Luther King Jr.

"In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.
In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce?
The cuckoo clock!!"
Harry Lime [Orsen Wells] The Third Man 1949

"Civilization will not attain to its perfection,
until the last stone from the last church,
falls on the last priest."
Emile Zola

"....I have an important message to deliver to all the cute people all over the world.

If you're out there and you're not cute, maybe you're beautiful, I just want to tell you somethin'- there's more of us ugly mother-fuckers than you are, hey-y, so watch out now..."
Frank Zappa